After cleaning and preparing the primary mirror for aluminizing (see blog post below: http://www.lowell.edu/blog/?p=4008), technicians loaded it into the coating chamber and initiated the pump-down procedure. Shortly after the New Year, we achieved the desired vacuum level and “fired” the coating chamber successfully to aluminize the mirror.This ultra-fine layer of highly reflective aluminum is more than 1000 times thinner than a sheet of paper! See additional pictures of this process at the DCT slide show: http://www.lowell.edu/dct/tour.php